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Jeff

* wrote, On 5/25/2007 6:50 AM:
From reading your posting I take it that you grind your coffee at home.
Or you grind the beans on your sailboat?
With a 12 volts inverter I can always grind the coffee beans or would a
manual grinder be better.
The other thing is how long would green coffee beans last on a sailboat?

The single most important thing you can do to enjoy good coffee is to
grind it yourself within minutes of brewing. The decline in quality
is almost immediate and rapid after grinding, especially in a humid
environment. I mean no offense to those who love perc'd pre-ground
Maxwell House, or Star$ concoctions, but these drinks have little
resemblance to real coffee.

I use a good burr grinder, powered by inverter. There are good manual
grinders (Zassenhaus is the brand to look for) but this is a good time
to use electricity. One of my goals is repeatability, so I weigh the
beans (at home) and grind with the same settings, and measure the
water carefully. For this reason I avoid things like "whirly blade"
grinders and scoops.

After roasting, beans can be frozen, but you should pull out several
days worth and let it defrost while still sealed. You don't want to
open a cold bag in a humid environment - that creates condensation
which kills the beans. For this reason, storing beans for daily use
in the fridge is a big no-no. Those foil bags with the little valves
will keep beans quite good for several days up to a few weeks. If you
don't mind some degradation, you can believe the 90 day "best before"
time stamps, but I don't buy it.

The traditional wisdom is that green beans stay fresh for 6 to 18
months. However, this is very dependent on the conditions, and it
really applies to mediocre, commercial beans that don't have much to
lose. In the last few years, some of the highest grades of green has
been vacuumed bagged at the the source rather than using the
traditional jute bags. Recently, I attended a class where we tasted
coffee where the green beans had been stored normally for 6 months, a
year, and some that had been frozen. The frozen was clearly superior,
so now I stash excess beans in the freezer. This isn't practical on
most boats, so I would advise vacuum sealing in batches of several
pounds, and restocking every 6 months or so. BTW, a Tilia
"Foodsaver" vacuum sealer is a very handy gadget for preserving food,
coffee, and spare parts. Mine gets a workout ever summer in
preparation for cruises.

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